“Little attention has really been given to Widgets since Apple made them the ‘in-thing’ in operating systems (take note of Vista using them) when Tiger was launched last year. There’s an awful lot of widgets available that are, questionable, to say the least, but there’s also an array of interesting and useful widgets which can actually help you in your way whilst using your Mac,” Aaron Wright writes for Apple Matters. “So, to get some more attention on those useful (and sometimes useless) applications, I’ve decided to compose a list of my favourite and most used Widgets currently available.”
Wright’s 9 Best Dashboard Widgets:
• iPhoto Mini
• iTunes Stats
• Hang Man
• Scenario Poker
• Tigergotchi
• Auto Crossword
• Digg.com
• Applematters.com
• iStat Pro
Full article with descriptions, screenshots, and download links here.
MacDailyNews Take: The 10th? Shamelessly, we direct you to our MacDailyNews Dashboard Widget. More info, screenshots and download link here.
Surely, you have others ideas of great widgets, so please share them below (and, yes, we’ll stop calling you “Surely.”)
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Related articles:
Google debuts Dashboard Widgets for Mac webpage – February 24, 2006
Microsoft debuts Dashboard Widgets, er, ‘Microsoft Gadgets’ – September 13, 2005
MacDailyNews Dashboard Widget 2.0 released – September 03, 2005
Free ‘Amnesty Screen Saver’ lets Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets run as Screen Savers – August 11, 2005
Runaway hit: Apple Mac OS X Tiger Dashboard Widgets pass one thousand milestone – August 02, 2005
Amnesty Widget Browser 1.0 released; runs Dashboard Widgets on Mac OS X Panther, Tiger Desktops – July 05, 2005
Newsday: ‘Widget mania is for real’ with Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger’s Dashboard – July 04, 2005
Free ‘Airport Radar’ Mac OS X Tiger Dashboard Widget scans for wireless networks – June 14, 2005
ExtremeTech picks ‘MacDailyNews Widget’ among ’20 Favorite Mac OS X Tiger Dashboard Widgets’ – June 14, 2005
Chi Pet!
Lightsaber, it’s just the most useful Widget ever!
Will Mac widgets work on Vista and vice versa? Not that I care.
WOW! A day to go down in history…
MDN places article titles in the window title for bookmarking purposes!
Great job…. just a few years late.
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Is he serious?
top ten:
1) Weather
2) Marquee (local movie theatres)
3) Yellow Pages
4) White Pages
5) Dictionary Thesaurus
6) Address Book
7) Art Directors Kit
8) Screen Grab
9) Dashflix
10) iStat Pro
I have permanently disable dashboard. It’s useless.
Slothcam is excellent too!, and MDN’s widget of course
I vote for VelaClock. I travel a lot and have family, friends, and colleagues all over the world. VelaClock provides highly accurate timezone info for as many cities as you’d like worldwide, all listed in a format similar to Mac OS X’s Stocks widget.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/information/velaclock.html
How do you permanently disable Dashboard?
Voyager,
Thanks for noticing! We turned it on last Friday night. Sorry it took so long for us to add it.
Dashboard is uselss to me as well. It’s cool but unnecessary .
crappo
1) istat
2)converter
3) dictionary
4) calculator
5) sticky
6) ical
7) bbc motion gallery
anything else just adds to slow-down ;P
increase productivity and desktop real estate
Perfect timing to have this list. I just got my new MacBook Pro so its my first taste of 10.4.
‘Sing That iTune’ is the best widget ever.
You can disable Dashboard through Terminal, or any number of utilities (search VersionTraker). Disabled mine because it was so dog ass slow on my G3 400 (my problem…not Dashboard’s).
G-Spank has it right. MDN needs to get more sleep, and stop drinking it’s own Kool-Aid. I have just about all the ones G-Spank has with the addition of the Traffic widget.
The Azureus Widget – so useful Apple won’t list it on their site.
Here are six useful and cool ones
Stats For Adsense
Package Tracker Widget
Whoopee Cushion Widget
StopDashboard
iCal Events
UtilityButton
Oops, not MDN but “Applematters”. Seriously, do they even post good articles there anymore? No….
Package Tracker is a great one!
It would be nice if someone could do a nanobook countdown widget, too.
dashboard – eyecandy for the masses.
geeks use widgets to try to impress girls who would never date the geeks even if they payed them.
macwidgetgeek: “uh, look debbie, cool…widget… hang man, cool right? and yellow pages..wow..look i can find a pizza place…cool..uh cool widgets on a mac right?, cool.”
debbie: “get lost geek.”
MDN: (and, yes, we’ll stop calling you “Surely.”)
Feed me, Seymore!
Sorry, someone had to do it.
Well, if you think about it, unless you use terminal all the time, OS X is also eye candy.
Personally, I’ve totally given up on widgets, at least those that need to be in that limbo state called Dashboard. Cute, but pointless.
My useful widgets
1)iStat Pro
2)Proportion Wheel
3)Art Director’s Toolkit Widget
4)Doppler Radar